“The Great Game Rule #2: When a deckbearer is defeated, anyone may take their cards.”
A few minutes later, and after sending Cereboo back to the deck, Wolfe slipped back into his seat at the table with a nod to Harry and Dan. Heinrich was missing, but the rest of the inner circle was still at the table.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
Damian had four cards out, each floating in front of him. Most of his cards glowed a fiery red, and every minute, he swiped them to the side, switching them for others and staring at them. Four cards at a time was impressive—that was one more card out than a Level One deckbearer would normally possess.
Wolfe wondered when the fuck the miserable little man had been able to level up and improve his hand size. Damian was sifting through cards laid out on the table, and even as Wolfe watched, he removed one from the cards floating in front of him and replaced it in a single swap.
“He got new cards?” Wolfe asked over the music that still thumped through the club.
Big Man Grimm nodded, a tight smile on his face. “Yes. My son was gifted a deck with some Beelzebub cards in it. Just like his old man before him.”
Wolfe glanced over at Damian’s robust frame and chuckled. And at least one of you favors gluttony in turn.
Damian glanced up, his face flushed. “Wolfe, I got a companion card. They’re new to this drop. They cost no power to use, so they make any deckbearer that has them, like me”—Damian tapped his own chest with a ring-encrusted, pudgy hand, smiling broadly—“very powerful.”
I bet you love the idea of finally being powerful, Wolfe thought, keeping his sneer from reaching his face. It wasn’t fair to Damian to judge him for wanting the cards so desperately, Wolfe knew. What the gods had taken from Thad in the brains department, they had taken from Damian in the brawn department. Of course the big man’s son wanted to be powerful, and if his lust for cards was a little unseemly, well, at least it made sense.
Wolfe raised an empty glass at Damian. “Congratulations.”
Big Man Grimm turned to Wolfe, his question on his face.
Wolfe hesitated but then said, “I got a deck as well.”
A couple of the other gang members around the table clapped, but Thaddeus Junior exploded and swiped a half-empty brandy glass from the table. “What? How is that possible? I’m the oldest son! Damian got a deck, Heinrich got a deck, and our dog got a deck?. How come I didn’t, Dad? What a crock of shit.”
Wolfe gave Thad Junior the eye as a nearby waitress came over and started to clean it up. Daddy already bought you one, you spoiled little shit. Wolfe had known Thad Jr. since Wolfe was eighteen and Thad Jr. had been ten. He had been spoiled then too.
Damian stared at Wolfe with curiosity.
Miriam had her arms crossed over her chest. She reached one slender arm out and languidly took a wineglass, raising it and a black-dyed eyebrow at Wolfe. “Congratulations. Welcome to the true aristocracy, the only one that really matters.”
“What did Heinrich get?” Wolfe asked.
“He claimed he only got generic Infernal and Psychic cards,” Damian said, running a finger across the table. “Then he ran off with some whore, like he always does to celebrate. What cards did you get? I can’t wait to tell you what I got.”
Big Man Grimm chopped his hand through the air. “Enough of this. I’m glad so many of us got decks, but we can compare cards later. Wolfe, I’m sorry, but I called you down here because I’m having a feeling… I want you to go and provide back-up at the docks.”
Wolfe sighed.
Big Man Grimm frowned. “I know, my friend, and I’m sorry. We can’t afford to lose this shipment. If it goes away, we’re fucked. A few years ago, we were the strongest family in Noimoire, but we’re losing it. It stops tonight—this new year, with our new deckbearers, we will remake ourselves.”
Wolfe sighed again, but stood from the table. He really wanted to figure out what being a deckbearer meant. To sit at some computer and learn about the new companion system and what cool cards had been released with this current set. Check out card combos that might work with his deck. Wolfe had already had a ton of money squirreled away, from his time as Big Man Grimm’s top enforcer. He’d just gotten even more. Before now, he hadn’t had a reason to spend the money. Cards that helped him in his job, though…
But Wolfe wouldn’t say no to Big Man Grimm. He owed the man too much.
“I’ll be at the docks in fifteen,” Wolfe said, stepping away from the table and heading for the elevator to the garage.
On his way, he avoided the couple people that were sobbing over not having gotten decks and not becoming special in a single moment.
Wolfe had problems of his own.
***
Three minutes later, Wolfe stepped into his beat-up black Chrysler 300 SRT. Wolfe liked his car—it appeared to be a boring sedan, but it had a ton of power under the hood. He even left a few dents and scratches in it to encourage the view he was poor and harmless. Even if most of the players in the Noimoire underworld—and even a few in the larger circles within the greater rust belt—knew him, the street-rank thugs didn’t know him on sight, so it was still possible for Wolfe to appear unimportant occasionally, and take people unawares.
Plus, an expensive car in the bad parts of Noimoire got the cops on you faster than shit got flies.
Wolfe had also paid good money on some modifications—armor plating in the door, bulletproof windows, and a couple of small, hidden compartments in case he ever needed to smuggle something.
Wolfe reached back and put his gift from Big Man Grimm in one of the smuggling compartments. Then he drove out of the underground parking garage and onto the usually dark and rain-filled streets of Noimoire. It was raining, a cold drizzle, but it wasn’t that dark in this part of the city—the part where the city spiked vertical. The glittering lights of the club district plus the flashes of fireworks lit the place up decently.
Even if they hadn’t, all the billboards had their own floodlights, which would have kept the streets lit. Wolfe could practically drive the city by the insane billboards.
He glanced up at the floodlit signs through his rain-slicked windshield. To get home, take a right at the giant ‘soap’ card billboard, with ‘germ attack’ listed where the magic attack stat would normally go. So clever, no one has ever done that before. Then take a left at the advertisement for Gavin’s, the online card buying site. It actually makes sense to advertise here, I suppose. Noimoire, and similar cities, are the only places with enough money to justify blanket advertising a site for buying cards when the minimum price of a card is fifty K, and the cards get more expensive rapidly from there. Wolfe had nearly half a million saved up from his life as an enforcer, and briefly wondered about whether he could buy the other five cards he needed.
Wolfe laughed and met his own eyes in the rear-view mirror. “Sure, buddy, you can just buy these five ultra cards when some legendary and mythic cards have gone for hundreds of millions of dollars or even caused wars. Sure. It’ll be that easy. Face it, this is gonna be a whole thing.”
The lights faded as Wolfe left the glitzy nightlife district and headed to the docks, and the billboards began to advertise alcohol. There were a lot of docks in Noimoire’s crescent-shaped harbor, but the ones Wolfe was headed to were in the poor part of town. Far fewer cars and people were out at night here, and the ones who were mostly wanted—or purveyed—illicit drugs or sex.
Wolfe chuckled quietly to himself, noting that they were doing it from under awnings at the moment, trying to stay dry in the rain.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out another cigarette, lighting it from his car lighter and then puffing. He didn’t expect trouble on Drop Night, not till he got to the destination, at least, but his eyes scanned for danger through the rain and his wiper blades all the same.
He noted the car idling down a side street with its headlights on as he turned onto Main Street, but his danger sense didn’t flare until it sped toward him. What the hell?
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Wolfe yanked his steering wheel to the left. The oncoming car sideswiped him, and they both spun out, the sounds of metal crunching filling the night air. Even before the collision, and despite having never been a deckbearer before, Wolfe had already placed his hand on his chest, and before his car had fully come to a stop, he had his cards up.
Wolfe had always been an intuitive killer with whatever tool came to hand.
He saw two Escaped Damned cards and a Loyal Guard Dog card floating in front of him—as well as his ever-present companion card. Fuck. Of course I didn’t get my mantle card. Well, we’re doing this without the added personal protection, I guess. Never stopped me before.
A notification popped into his vision, claiming that a deckbearer had drawn their deck. A fierce predatory glee filled Wolfe. Another deckbearer. Which might mean more cards, even if it means more danger. And I haven’t even seen all my own cards yet.
He grabbed his companion card, Cereboo, and willed it into existence just outside the car door even as gunfire erupted from the opposite vehicle and a series of spiderwebs formed in his windows where the bullets had been caught by the bulletproof glass.
Wolfe ducked below the window level and released his seatbelt. Then he opened the passenger-side door and slapped his glove box open. He grabbed his firearm—an STI international Edge 40 caliber with a 14-round magazine—from the glovebox and rolled out of his car, onto the rain-slick cement of the sidewalk. Less than five seconds after the collision, Wolfe came to his feet in a crouch, his pistol pointed at his opponents’ car, watching through the rain-splatters on his hood for a target.
His companion card, Cereboo—now a two-hundred-pound, black-skinned boxer puppy with three heads—woofed excitedly and leapt onto the first thug out of the car, grabbing both arms in his left and right mouths and chewing on the guy’s shoulder with his center head.
Wolfe wasted the second thug that came from the car—the back passenger side, facing him—with three shots to the chest from his slightly-more-powerful than cop guns pistol. He noted the snake tattoo on the thug’s exposed shoulder. The Cobras. Of course.
He also received a hundred experience and a level notification overlaid across his vision, but he dismissed those.
But both of the ones to come out of the car side facing Wolfe were now out of the fight—one being chewed on by Cereboo, the other dead.
I’ve still got it! These fuckers ambushed me and I’m the one that got first blood!
Someone still inside the car shot Cereboo in his left head, screaming “Kill the fucking card!” and blood splashed from the dog’s head, but Wolfe’s new mutt didn’t go down. A guy came out of the back driver’s side and shot over the hood of the car, screaming “I’m taking out their deckbearer!” Wolfe cussed as the shot grazed his arm.
Four total mooks, three I still need to kill, Wolfe catalogued automatically.
Wolfe’s first-ever combat log appeared in his vision, but he mentally pushed it aside—it wasn’t helpful in the middle of combat.
As he ducked back behind the car, he grabbed his next card: the Loyal Guard Dog. He was tempted to pull the Escaped Damned, as it had immense physical defense, but it had almost nothing else, and Wolfe needed damage output to finish the fight since the momentum had shifted in his favor. Never give your enemies a chance to recover.
Magic flowed from him as he brought forth his card, a tickling sensation running from his chest along his arm and out through his hand.
Loyal Guard Dog
Common Beast[Canine] Creature Tier-1
1 Beast Power
Health: 10
Attack: 5
Magical Attack: N/A
Defense: 5
Magical Defense: 2
Special: May remain on the battlefield for twice as long as the caster’s ‘base length of play’ stat.
“A Powerful mastiff guard dog. A basic low-level Beast creature, common throughout the world in junkyards and the homes of people that want to look dangerous.”
The dog manifested. It hit the ground and ran around Wolfe’s car. Another creature also manifested—an enemy spirit obviously summoned by one of the thugs. It was a yellow-red spirit that appeared to be on fire. It floated around the thug’s car, its arms outstretched. Wolfe cussed. He brought his own Escaped Damned to the fight.
Both his dogs attacked the Escaped Damned.
Wolfe grimaced and muttered to himself, “The Great Game Rule Fourteen: Summoned creatures must attack opposing summoned creatures first, before they can target enemy deckbearers or mortals.”
Fortunately, deckbearers could attack whomever they wanted.
Wolfe popped back up and finished off the wounded thug that Cereboo hadn’t quite put away, noting that the experience was reduced to fifty this time. He dove back behind the car as a fusillade of bullets whistled through the air where he had been. His driver-side window finally broke.
Wolfe also got a notification that his Cereboo had finished the Escaped Damned off, briefly surprising him. Then he remembered the card. Right, Cereboo gets a huge bonus to his attack against other Infernal cards. Convenient.
Wolfe ejected the magazine from his pistol, pushed a new one in, and then swiped his cards away, bringing the next three up for use. He got a Tormentor Imp that cost one Infernal power, a Rescue Dog that cost one Beast power, and a card called Return to the Pit that only required one available Infernal power to use. The last was a persistent activated card.
Wolfe was pretty sure he had the advantage at the moment—but he needed to hold it for a few more seconds. He couldn’t give the enemy deckbearer a chance to change the flow of combat with his deck.
Hoping the Cobra gang enforcer would pull a second Infernal creature, Wolfe played the Return to the Pit card, spending his last power. And then he fired over the hood of the car to distract his enemy.
For a fraction of a second, as he huddled behind his shot-up and dented car, Wolfe’s mind wandered away from the combat, something that almost never happened to him. I’m a real deckbearer! I just ran a tribe-specific shutdown strategy, something my deck seems built for! It’s like the king-of-cards comic!
A brief yellow and red flash of flame appeared—another Escaped Damned; the guy wasn’t that creative—and then the Return to the Pit card activated, wiping the creature card out and trapping the one Infernal power his opponent had used for five minutes. The card briefly manifested as a pentagram, then dissipated, the energy flying back into Wolfe’s chest and disappearing. Returning to my deck.
It’s just you, me, and my doggo, assholes! I’m betting you’re fucked.
The third thug was covered in bites but tried a wild kick to fend off Cereboo. His planted foot flew out from under him and he slammed down back first onto the rain-slick pavement. The Loyal Guard Dog and Cereboo both leapt forward and ended the last thug with four bites, one to the thug’s neck. Wolfe got another fifty experience and went to level three.
Wolfe lurched to his feet, throwing his Rescue Pup card out as well.
A decently sized dog, maybe forty pounds, emaciated but with huge cute eyes, appeared. Wolfe fired rapidly at the enemy deckbearer, who ducked and brought forth a Tormentor Imp.
Those have got to be the Infernal common baby drops for this drop season, Wolfe thought to himself as he raced around his own car. He swiped his cards again, and his mantle—Soul Hunter—another Rescue Pup, and a second Return to the Pit appeared.
His Loyal Guard Dog and Rescue Pup was still in play, as was Cereboo. Wolfe had the upper hand and meant to keep it, which in this case meant doubling down on his shut-down strategy. He pulled the Return to the Pit to prevent an enemy creature from appearing. If his creatures could attack the enemy deckbearer, he would win, and he was pretty sure they’d finish the enemy imp off quickly.
As he came around the enemy car, however, his preparation proved unnecessary. The deckbearer was firing at Cereboo while trying to dodge the three dogs. What he wasn’t doing was keeping his eye on the guy with the gun.
“Good-bye, fucker,” Wolfe said, satisfaction in his voice as he held his pistol out. The man turned, his expression a focused snarl. Wolfe hit him with a couple of shots to the chest. The enemy deckbearer went down, a red mist briefly marking the space the bullets had hit him. The Tormentor Imp disappeared in a puff of red smoke.
Wolfe ejected the clip and reloaded his pistol a second time, storing his empty while standing over his dead assailants. “Fuck around and find out,” he muttered to their uncaring corpses.
Wolfe had gotten sixty-seven experience for his last kill—he was pretty sure it had been sixty-six point six, which felt appropriate and caused him a brief, black chuckle. The deckbearer’s cards appeared on the ground next to the corpse. Wolfe scooped them up before the seeping blood got on them. Wolfe didn’t know if they could be stained or not, but he didn’t want fucked-up cards in his deck.
As he picked the cards up, the rain beaded on them but never soaked in. Probably can’t be affected by normal things, then.
Wolfe scanned the scene—four corpses with snake tattoos on their arms, pools of blood everywhere slowly diluting in the rain, guns, and a car with a dented front. Plus, his own busted vehicle. He sighed. All right, more like twenty minutes till I reach the docks.
Also, how the fuck do the Cobras keep getting the drop on us?
He frowned at his expensive suit, torn and stained and now getting wet.
The Loyal Guard Dog and Rescue Pup waited, doing nothing, but Cereboo ran up to Wolfe and planted his feet on his chest, all three heads licking him. Each had the oversized idiot grin of the boxer, as well as the enlarged jowls even the puppies got. Wolfe was again powerfully reminded of his old dog, Pierce. Despite the setting, he was warmed by his new companion’s presence. “Who’s a good boy, helping me put down the Cobras? Is it you?”
Cereboo woofed with all three mouths.
I wonder if Cereboo playing with me, rather than waiting like my other summons, is a sign of his personality?
Wolfe put the question from his mind as he laughed at his enthusiastic new demon-puppy. He had work to do, so he wrestled Cereboo aside, then pointed to the ground next to him. “Sit.”
Cereboo sat, all three heads panting happily.
Wolfe pulled his phone out and called Rich while he rooted for and found his own ejected empty clip.
“Wolfe?” the voice answered.
“We have a situation, and I’m needed elsewhere. Get a cleaner crew to Main and Thirty-First, near the local Cardless Café. Four bodies, all Cobras, and a dented car. Disappear the bodies and repurpose the car and guns.”
“I’m, um, about to… you know. With Tiffany.”
“Take her or leave her—get road head, for all I care—but get out here and get it done.”
There was a brief pause, then Rich’s annoyed voice came through the phone. “All right, I’ll be there.”
Wolfe ended the call, and mentally dismissed his two other summoned cards. Both dissipated into a brownish light and flowed back into Wolfe. Then he looked at Cereboo. “I’m sorry, buddy, but I need to put you back in the deck, okay?”
Cereboo whined.
Wolfe grimaced. “If any deckbearer sees you, they’ll be able to read your card. Then they’ll try to take you from me, boy, because you’re part of some super rare card set. I’d rather not deal with that shit, okay? I already lost one dog this month.”
Cereboo flopped to the ground but quit whining, and Wolfe took the action as acceptance. He unsummoned Cereboo, who became red energy and rushed back into Wolfe’s chest.
He went to his car, swept the glass from the driver’s seat, and continued to the docks, eighty percent of his brain thinking about the strategy he had almost instinctively employed against the enemy deckbearer, and other things he might be able to do with his deck.
But the last twenty percent was occupied with a fierce joy at his victory. Wolfe still had it. And he wasn’t about to lose his cards or fail Big Man Grimm.